


ouroboros

by kamisado



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mild Horror, Panic Attacks, noah and his very poor self-esteem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 19:33:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11698437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kamisado/pseuds/kamisado
Summary: Noah Czerny is seventeen years old when his best friend beats him to death with his own skateboard.





	ouroboros

**Author's Note:**

> note: right from the start there are some fairly graphic/gory descriptions of noah and gansey’s deaths and ronan’s suicide attempt, it’s a little more graphic than canon so please heed the tags!!

Noah Czerny is seventeen years old when his best friend beats him to death with his own skateboard.

Miles along the ley line, a young boy lies in the undergrowth, frightened and alone, body littered with pinprick hornet stings. Winged insects pour from his nose, his mouth, his _ears_ , the tiny body swollen and unrecognizable. Noah is both there and not there when it happens. He sees the youngest Gansey lying on the forest floor, he sees himself bleeding, sprawled unnaturally across the leaves, arms curled around his head to protect himself from the blows. The images flicker together in his mind: two children dying on the ley line, two children dead before their time.

Gansey lives. Noah doesn’t.

 

* * *

 

Seven years pass, flickering in and out of existence. He’s getting better at this whole ghost thing now, but his stomach still turns when he touches the hollow in his cheek, the memory of splintered bones beneath his fingertips. The more he thinks about it, the more real it becomes.

Sometimes, he follows Whelk. Out of some sick sense of obligation or maybe just longing Noah’s not sure, but either way, it’s compelling. Whelk never sees him, and Noah likes it that way. Every now and again, he’s filled with the urge to destroy Whelk’s house, to slash his car tires and set his kitchen on fire. Everything that Whelk holds dear dissolving into flame and ash and memory. Whelk lives comfortably enough these days, old money always brings old connections, and Noah hates it. He hates how Whelk lost everything seven years ago, but still managed to turn out fine.

Some days Noah can feel the white-hot pulse of revenge in his veins, the desire to burn, to slash, to destroy, but he can never bring himself to do it.

There’s a stack of papers on the coffee table and Noah finds himself drawn to the certificate tossed haphazardly on top. Gold leaf lines the edges, and he knows he’s not quite tangible enough to pick it up, but he’s present enough that bile rises in his throat at the sight. _Certificate of Education_. He wants to tear it into tiny pieces, turn it to dust, he can’t bear to think of Whelk near children. Whelk as someone to be trusted, someone to look up to, to imitate. Noah knows what that feels like, where that _leads_.

Tears he hasn’t shed in seven years, tears he knows he _can’t_ shed anymore prickle at his eyes. Noah’s not corporeal or malicious enough to destroy it, but Whelk returns home to his stack of papers spread across the living room floor and the certificate stuffed down the back of the couch.

 

* * *

 

Noah’s the first to find Ronan that fateful night, when his dreams fight back and claw at his body, tearing at his arms and wrists. Panic grips Noah’s throat with icy fingers; it crushes his chest, like the ribs he no longer has are squeezing round lungs he no longer needs. _It’s not enough._ Blood is spilling from Ronan’s wounds, snaking across the concrete floor of Monmouth in gory rivulets.

And Noah can’t do anything about it. He reaches for a shirt to press on the wounds, anything to keep the pressure on, keep the blood from spilling out, but his hands pass through. He is intangible, a mere memory of a boy.  

Of course, Gansey bursts in, heroic as ever. He’s cursing and wrapping Ronan’s wrists and yelling at Noah to get help, to call for an ambulance, for _fuck’s_ sake, Noah, _don’t just stand there!_ But he is frozen, paralyzed, hands clapped tightly over his mouth. In his mind, he sees Whelk standing over him, he feels blood dripping warmly from his lips. He knows it’s not real, knows that ghosts don’t _bleed_ , but he can still feel the steady spill against his fingertips.  Gansey is hysterical, but he still manages to go with Ronan to the hospital, which is more than can be said for Noah.

Later Gansey will thank him, will forgive him for his inaction, but Noah knows he won’t forget the way Gansey wouldn’t look at him when the paramedics came.

 

* * *

 

The worst part is re-enacting his death. He hates thinking about it like that because it almost sounds like it’s voluntary, and it’s really _not._ Out of nowhere, his head will snap forwards, a cry torn from his throat, vision blurring with the blinding pain. He feels his neck snap sideways with the second blow, the crunch of teeth and bone in his mouth, the warm tang of blood spilling from his lips. He lifts his hands to his mouth, stomach lurching when they come away red.

He knows that this isn’t real, that it’s just the ley line playing tricks on him, but he pleads with Whelk anyway, even if the only person he can see is Ronan confused in Monmouth, or Adam near St Agnes’ Church, or Blue outside 300 Fox Way. He wants them to look away, he doesn’t want to lay himself bare like this, but they can never tear their eyes from this hideous spectacle laid out before them.

The last six minutes are always the worst. The death rattle wracks his whole body, trembling with shock and blood loss and _fear._ A boy barely alive, wondering if this is really the end. He wonders how it came to this, wonders if there was anything he could have done to stop it. He’s the one with blood seeping into the moss and leaf mulch, icy cold and gasping, and all he can do is blame himself. Noah wishes he could say he clung to life, grasped at those last few seconds with everything he had, but he knows he’d be lying through his teeth.

He just wanted it to be _over._

“Why do you do that?” Blue asks one day, not quite managing to keep the waver out of her voice. She stares up at him, but Noah can’t meet her gaze. He can’t tell her the truth, because the truth is he doesn’t know. It just happens. Seven years has been long enough to get used to the idea of being dead, but it seems there’s no such thing as taking a secret to the grave any more. He forces down the slick of blood coating his throat that’s not really there and pretends he has no idea what she’s talking about.

He’s not in the business of telling secrets, and sometimes that means his own ones too.

 

* * *

 

Most of all, he wants to resent Gansey. He wants to hate him for having his life and getting to grow up and for every minute of the last seven years that his own body festered in the dirt of the forest. He wants to resent the way Gansey commands a room with his presence, all heads turning, all smiling, all waving. Noah’s pretty sure he couldn’t even do that when he was alive. But there's little chance of that happening now; he's just a leech on the ley line, parasitic and pathetic and not quite real.

 _It's not Gansey’s fault_ , Noah tells himself. It’s not his fault he’s allergic to bees and wasps and hornets, and it’s not his fault that he stepped on a nest. _It’s not your fault either_ , he wants to tell himself, but even after seven years he still can’t reconcile himself to that fact.

Noah knows he can't resent Gansey, because deep down he knows Gansey won't see past seventeen either. Twin victims in Aglionby sweaters, one with rain-soaked shoulders, the other with mud-filled fingernails. Twin sacrifices, seventeen together, seventeen forever. Noah knows he can't keep Gansey alive, but at least he can keep him company in death.

It’s late one night when he finds himself in Monmouth Manufacturing. It’s dark, streetlamps outside cast strange unfamiliar shadows up the cold brick walls. The main room is cathedral-quiet, dust-motes dancing in the light. Noah doesn’t see Gansey at first. Knowing and seeing everything at once means the world blends into radio static, a vague awareness of what was and is and will be, but he tries to anchor himself to the moments that _matter._ And he knows he’s here for a reason.

A shuddering gasp alerts Noah to Gansey’s presence. Gansey’s a dark silhouette against the dim light spilling from the window, shoulders hunched, hands clasped over his ears, knees pulled up to his chest. Noah wishes he wasn’t so well acquainted with panic attacks, but even alive he knew the feeling well, the sudden crushing tightness in his chest, the way the air was snatched from his lungs.

“Gansey?” Noah’s voice echoes in the stillness of the room. Gansey’s flinch is full-body, a violent spasm that makes Noah wince. He crouches at Gansey’s side, close but not too close. In the strange muted glow from the streetlamps outside, Gansey looks like a child again, the teartracks stark against his cheeks.

“Gansey, it’s me, it’s Noah,” he says, placatingly. Gansey’s eyes snap open. He stares fixedly at a point right to the left of Noah, breathing short and ragged.

“Noah?”

“It’s okay, Gansey. There’s nothing there, I promise.” He pauses. “And you know I never break my promises.” Gansey’s eyes snap to him, his hands shift away from his ears, just a little. “I’m gonna need you to slow that breathing down though.” Noah takes a deep breath into lungs that haven’t been needed for seven years and breathes out again. He repeats, watching Gansey carefully until his breathing is mirrored. Gansey is still jittery, clenching and unclenching his fists, but he seems more alert now, and Noah can tell the worst is over.

“I’m sorry, Noah,” Gansey says after a long while, scrubbing his eyes with the sleeve of his gray crew team sweater. Noah sits at his side, not touching, but close enough to feel the heat radiating from Gansey. They stare out at the filthy windows of Monmouth, squinting at the spiderweb of cracks across one of the wide panes.

“What for?” Noah turns to look at him. Gansey in profile is a warrior king, strong features and a firm ruling hand. But Gansey in this light, with red-rimmed eyes and a thumb pressed to his lips, this Gansey is young and soft and utterly terrified.

“Freaking out, I guess,” he says after a pause. “It’s been happening a lot more this last few weeks and I’m not really sure how to fix it.” His voice breaks over the last few words and Noah’s doesn’t know what to say. In life he sought solace in humor, but in death it seems all he can do is make people grateful their problems aren’t as bad as his. Somehow that doesn’t seem appropriate here.

The silence between them is palpable. Noah badly wants to reach out and take Gansey’s hand, but he knows he shouldn’t. He fidgets, twisting his fingers together, still looking at Gansey. He’s about to speak, regaling tales of high school panic attacks in bathroom stalls, of being sick before public speeches, of the ever-present thrum of anxiety in his chest when he was alive, but Gansey gets there first.

“I don’t want to die.” The words are choked out, almost inaudible, an admission never meant to be made aloud. Noah presses his lips together, turns away. He supposes it was naïve, he’s known for seven years that Gansey’s time was limited, but he never thought Gansey knew too. He was meant to be the one harboring death in his bones, but here Gansey was, still trapped seven years in the past.

They had both died that April afternoon, and neither had quite managed to move on. 

Gansey had promised to use his favor to give his life for Noah’s; Noah remembers that night like a knife to the chest. A night just like this, with cool air and quiet shaky voices. Because Gansey was doing what he did best, being noble and brave and kind, and Noah knew that the gesture was empty. He knew all along there was no favor, that ley line deals only went one way and he’d already done his part.

And staring out at the patchwork glass windows of Monmouth Manufacturing, Noah knew that once he started to decay, once he became unrecognizable as a friend and more a threat to Gansey’s loved ones, Gansey would forget that promise as quickly as it had come. If Gansey was a king, pulling swords and Camaro tires from lakes, then Noah was a court jester, pleasant for a while and eventually, inevitably, confined to the margins of history.

Noah knows he has plenty of reasons to resent Gansey. But Gansey reaches across and takes his hand, gentle, hesitant. He is warm, solid, and so very _alive_. It’s Noah’s turn to meet Gansey’s eyes, and even though he knows how this is going to pan out in the end, he knows why he makes the choices he has done and will do.

“Thank you,” Gansey says. His eyes gleam with the sincerity Noah only sees when Gansey’s poring over his journal or marking out ley lines on a map of the Eastern Seaboard with thumbtacks and twine. Noah feels privileged to share that look.

“For what?” He smiles crookedly, shrugging. Gansey smiles back, chuckles in the soft amber light as if the answer is obvious.

“For everything.”

And despite it all, Noah knows that in a heartbeat, he’d give his life again.

 

* * *

 

Noah always knew it would end like this, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less.

The demon tears him up inside, uses his mouth to scream, his hands to tear. It’s like re-enacting his death; he’s trapped inside his own mind, but this time the violence isn’t directed at him, it’s facing outwards and it’s bloody and visceral and _real._ He claws at Blue, he makes her bleed.

He is so filled with hate, and power, and rage. This is seven years of fury, seven years of fear and cowardice and uselessness made powerful, turned to poison in his veins. This is for every second Whelk had taken from him since that hot day in Spring, for every moment he’d never gotten to live, for every goodbye he never got to say.

He’s not a person anymore, he’s just an object, something to be used and abused and tossed aside like garbage. He’s spent seven years doing his best with the life the ley line has given him, but in the end he’s a puppet. A meaningless sacrifice for Whelk, an empty ghost to Gansey and his friends, a convenient shell for the dark spirit lurking beneath Cabeswater’s glossy magical exterior. The demon taps into his emotions, and that’s the worst part of all. The evil is amplifying him, but deep down, these emotions are all his own, and that’s what scares him the most.

 “Be Noah,” Gansey commands, his hands warm and strong and _alive_. He is everything Noah isn’t. He is everything that Noah could have been, everything that he might have become. In that moment Noah is even less than a ghost, than a memory of a tragic boy, a lost son who never came home. Noah _misses_ Gansey, misses hanging out with the gang like he used to, the long car rides and late night phone calls and shitty in-jokes. Noah loves Gansey, but the unfamiliar terror in Gansey’s eyes makes Noah’s heart ache, like every family member he never got to hug one last time, like every friend he never got to see again. Every unread message, every birthday he never saw, every Christmas present still wrapped in his parents’ house.

The demon is driven away, but what does it mean to be Noah now anyway?

 

* * *

 

When you die, time becomes a never-ending cycle, life unto life, death unto death. Noah learns this quickly.

Gansey is dead at seventeen in the middle of a road just out of Henrietta. His friends are at his side, broken and bruised. Cabeswater is sacrificed to bring him back and Noah knows it’s worth it to lose a place like that to bring back a boy like Gansey. Noah would see oceans run dry, cities tumble down, ice caps turn to slush just to save Gansey.

Gansey is dead at ten in the middle of a forest just out of D.C. Noah is kneeling at his side in the moss and the twigs. He only has seven more years to give to Gansey, but he’ll give them all.

“You will live because of Glendower,” Noah tells him, because it’s true, and because he loves Gansey, and Gansey loves Glendower. Glendower will give Gansey his heroic quest, Glendower will give him his friends, his passion, his reason to keep looking when the world is determined to keep him quiet, when his family wants nothing more than to shunt him from prestigious school to Ivy League to corporate office. Gansey will live because of Glendower, because the everlasting promise of that offers infinitely more than a dead teenager ever could.

And Noah Czerny is seventeen years old when his best friend beats him to death with his own skateboard. “Someone else on the ley line is dying when they should not, and so you will live when you should not.” In the end, that’s all there is.

Gansey lives. Noah doesn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr [here](https://henriettakings.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
